Donald Trump has fired Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook over allegations she committed mortgage fraud, the latest escalation in the US president’s attack on the central bank’s independence.
Cook’s exit will allow Trump to tap a replacement, helping him to exert more control over Fed policy. His demands for lower interest rates have so far fallen on deaf ears.
The Trump administration has pursued several of the president’s political enemies, including the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and the California senator Adam Schiff, over claims of mortgage fraud. Both James and Schiff denied the allegations.
Cook is not a politician, but is among a string of senior Fed policymakers who have defied Trump’s persistent calls for rate cuts. Appointed by Joe Biden in May 2022, she became the first Black woman to sit on the central bank’s board. Her term on the Fed’s board was not due to end until 2038.
She is a respected economist, with stints at Harvard University and Stanford University, who served on the council of economic advisers under Barack Obama.
The administration’s attack on her future at the Fed was led by Bill Pulte, a Trump-appointed official leading the US Federal Housing Finance Agency, who alleged she had claimed two different properties were her primary residences when obtaining mortgages in 2021.
“How can this woman be in charge of interest rates if she is allegedly lying to help her own interest rates?” Pulte wrote on X, formerly Twitter. He referred the case to the Department of Justice for investigation.
Trump seized on the claims before Cook had responded, writing on Wednesday on Truth Social, his social network, that she “must resign, now!!!”.